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The processes of working memory are complicated. They involve not only briefly holding onto current information needed for current tasks, and transiently holding information to be encoded into longer-term memory, but also calling up those memories in longer-term storage needed for immediate tasks and experiences. Neuroscientists Stephen Kosslyn and Olivier Koenig (1995) described these complex functions Working memory . corresponds to the activated information in long-term memories, the information in short-term memories, and the decision processes that manage which information is activated in the long-term memories and retained in short-term memories . . . an interplay between information that is stored temporarily and a larger body of stored knowledge. (p. 388) This interplay between a current focus of attention, some task or idea that an individual is attending to, and that person's store of long-term memories is essential to countless functions in daily life where one must pull...

Among the many specialized aspects of the prefrontal cortex are circuits managing central working memory functions. Many people think of memory as a self-contained function that, somewhat like a video recorder, captures pictures and sounds of each moment of personal experience, then files all of them in some cerebral vault for playback on demand. If that were the case, the brain would quickly be flooded with so much information that effective action would be impossible. Research suggests that the systems of memory are more efficient. The brain has networks of neurons that very briefly hold in an active state the perceptions and thoughts of each moment, linking them with stored memories that allow the individual to string together experiences moment by moment to make sense of what is being perceived or thought and to act accordingly. This is working memory. Without it, an individual is perpetually locked into the present moment, unable to link what was seen, heard, or thought a moment...

Chronic difficulties with memory appear to be a core problem in ADD syndrome, but the impairments are not generally with long-term storage memory instead they involve working memory, a term that has been used in many different ways, most of which are unrelated to the older term short-term memory. Working memory has several functions. An important one is to hold one bit of information active while working with another. One patient described his impairment of this essential function as lacking a hold button in his memory. Working memory, then, is not short-term memory. It does not function as the queue on a computer's printer, simply holding information briefly while it awaits further processing. Working memory, instead, is like a very active computational unit that not only holds information, but also actively processes this current information in connection with the vast files of longer-term memory. In other words, working memory might be compared to the RAM of a computer combined...

Another variable that may contribute mightily to the vulnerability of Gf and Gv variables on the Wechsler and Kaufman tests is working memory. Though this construct is used to label the WAIS-III WMI, in actuality working memory is crucial for all cognitive tasks. This variable has been assessed with auditory and visual tasks alike, and is best thought of as the mental scratch pad that people use to temporarily store information while solving a variety of cognitive problems. One's working memory capacity refers to the amount of information that each person is able to have access to on that scratch pad. Salthouse (1992) used a computation span as the measure of working memory for adults ages 18 to 83 years these adults were also administered measures of Gf (e.g., Raven's Matrices) and Gv (e.g., paper folding). Salthouse concluded that working memory is associated with about 50 of the age-related variance in the various measures of Gf and Gv. However, these findings about speed and...

Table 2.1 provides an overview (with a few representative references) of the wide variety of memory-related tasks that have been shown to be impaired by the non-selective antimuscarinic agent, scopolamine. Such tests encompass a wide range of behavioral procedures from classical conditioning (Pavlovian) tasks (e.g., inhibitory avoidance and fear conditioning), to spatial learning tasks (e.g., water maze and radial arm maze), to methods that assess prepulse inhibition of the auditory gating response. Antimuscarinics have also been shown to disrupt performance of more-complex operant (working-memory related) procedures such as delayed matching and delayed nonmatching tasks, time estimation procedures, and most recently, models of executive function (e.g., attentional set shifting) in rats. Similar to scopolamine, the nonselective muscarinic antagonist atropine, as well as several drugs with selectivity at muscarinic-receptor subtypes, disrupts performance of several of the same...

Matching-to-sample performance was first described in laboratory animals over 40 years ago 16 . The delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) task allows for the determination of components of reference and working memory in monkeys, i.e., delay-dependent effects can be distinguished from delay-independent effects on working memory. Increasing mnemonic burden decreases performance efficiency, and the resultant retention curve can provide information regarding the effect of a drug treatment or other manipulation on the components of memory 16 . Proficiency by macaques in the DMTS task depends upon unimpaired hippocampal and inferotem-poral cortical function 17, 18 , whereas acquisition of the matching component of the task is dependent upon frontotemporal cortical interactions 19, 20 . It is not too surprising, therefore, that the DMTS task is capable of detecting the decrease in cognitive proficiency that occurs with advanced age both in humans 21 and in monkeys 22 . Versions of the DMTS task...

The effects of mecamylamine have been tested on the three-panel runway task that has four choice points where the rat must choose among three doors 40 . Both working- and reference-memory versions of the task were utilized. For the working-memory task, the correct door choices were held constant throughout the six-trial session but changed from one session to the next, while the reference-memory test held the correct door choices constant throughout all testing sessions. Doses of 10 mg kg mecamylamine effectively impaired working but not reference memory 40 . Similarly, injections of 10 to 18 g side directly into the dorsal hippocampus also significantly increased working-memory errors but not reference-memory errors 40 . As with the RAM studies, mecamylamine is showing selective effects on

Various species of macaques, particularly Macaca mulatta (rhesus), have played an important role in our current understanding of the anatomical sites and in the behavioral and molecular mechanisms involved in cognition and memory. These versatile animals have been taught to perform a broad landscape of behavioral paradigms, many of which are relevant to human learning and memory. The rhesus monkey shares 92 to 95 genetic homology with the human species, and these animals enjoy a cognitive domain that allows for evaluation of higher-order cognitive and executive function. Nonverbal human cognitive tasks have been adapted for nonhuman primates, and vice versa, without reservation that a form of declarative memory is readily accessible in these animals. Numerous operant paradigms have been designed to evaluate aspects of reference memory, attention, and working memory (both short term and long term). Despite the various macaque species employed, and the variety of testing modalities...

Working Memory Lyeth and associates13 evaluated working-memory function after CFP injury with the radial arm maze (RAM) test. The RAM typically has eight arms that radiate from a central start platform. Each arm ends with a goal box. To investigate working memory, six of the eight arms were baited with food. A hungry rat is placed in the central start area and allowed to freely enter any of the arms of the maze and eat the food in the goal box. A trial continues until the rat has entered all the baited arms. The measure of the animal's working-memory function is how many correct choices it makes (i.e., not reentering arms that it has already visited). Prior to TBI, rats were trained until they made very few working-memory errors. After reaching criterion, animals were subjected to a mild or moderate level of CFP injury. Testing after injury found that magnitude and duration of the deficits in working memory were related to the severity of injury. In the mild-injury condition, working...

Schizophrenia is characterized by dysregulation of attention 49 . Four important domains of cognitive functioning have been described as impaired in schizophrenia attention, verbal fluency, working memory, and executive functioning 50 . Sustained attention appears to be a particular problem in schizophrenia that contributes to problems in other aspects of higher cognitive functioning 51 . Because of the apparent specificity of sustained attention to schizophrenia and its relationship to other important cognitive abilities, this aspect of cognition (which can be modeled in chronic-low-dose MPTP-treated monkeys) may be an important future target of intervention.

Unlike the coplanar PCBs, deficits on a variety of behavioral tasks have been observed following exposure to individual ortho-substituted PCB congeners and PCB mixtures. The discussion in this chapter is limited to a discussion of tests of executive functions that rely on cognitive processing within the prefrontal cortex (PFC), including tests of cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control (IC).

Other areas of the cortex have also been implicated in the expression of choice. Neurons in the parietal cortex fire differentially for preferred rewards 140, 165 . The premotor cortex has been shown to be involved with discrimination reversal tasks, reminiscent of differential effects reported with methylmercury 136 . All this is not meant to imply that cortical areas play no role in memory. Certainly they do, especially those involving working memory 94 , but many of the procedures used in neurotoxicity testing tap subcortical structures, such as the hippocampus.

In the chronic-low-dose MPTP model of early parkinsonism, animals develop cognitive deficits analogous to those described in early PD patients 25-28 , including deficits in attention, attention set shifting, cognitive flexibility, planning, and problem solving, but not in working or reference memory per se. Although it has been suggested that there may be a visuospatial working-memory deficit in early medicated PD patients 9 , it is possible that this deficit may not be a working-memory deficit per se but may reflect an impairment in attentional processes involved in visuospatial working-memory tasks 29 . This latter interpretation would be consistent with our data from MPTP-treated monkeys. In the first studies of chronic-low-dose MPTP-treated monkeys, deficits were observed in performance of spatial delayed response (both with fixed and variable delays), delayed alternation, delayed matching-to-sample, visual discrimination reversal, and object retrieval tasks 26, 27 . Deficits in...

Resemble those associated with frontal lobe dysfunction 9 . These deficits include difficulty in attention set shifting and set formation 10, 11 temporal ordering, sequencing, and planning 3 impaired nonverbal and verbal short-term recall impaired spatial short-term memory 12 and impairments in focused attention 13, 14 . Although recent data suggest that the cognitive deficits of PD initially appear to involve frontostriatal circuits and are similar to those found in patients with frontal lobe dysfunction 9 , as PD progresses, impairments are seen on tests that may involve more posterior cortical regions 4, 15, 16 . For example, early-stage PD patients seem to have more attentional executive functioning problems, whereas later-stage patients seem to have a broader range of deficits that include certain types of memory and working-memory impairments 9 . Studies have shown that non-medicated early-PD patients are unimpaired on performance of spatial working-memory tasks 17 , whereas...

Cognitive assays with normal animals are often used in the characterization of novel compounds. Typically, these tests are conducted under conditions that disrupt performance through increases in task difficulty. For example, an assay measuring visual attention might be made more difficult by employing stimuli of low salience or the inclusion of distracting stimuli. Similarly, a working-memory task can be made more difficult by increasing the number of items to be remembered or increasing the delay interval. It is important to recognize, however, that these parametric manipulations do not always simply make the task more difficult. Rather they can sometimes change the nature of the task and thereby change the neural systems engaged. For example, in the 5-CSRTT, noradrenergic lesions only impair performance when manipulations that activate this system are included, such as the inclusion of distractors or changes in the predictability of targets 11 . In addition, the inclusion of...

Evidence that young MeHg-exposed monkeys have difficulty recognizing faces even after several presentations have been reported 76, 77 . In these experiments, young monkeys were shown faces of monkeys, and the duration of gaze was recorded. Exposed monkeys tended to treat previously viewed faces as novel ones. These could reflect short-term memory loss or deficient recognition of faces. The latter is a function of visual cortex efferent from the primary cortex.

Investigation of the error pattern revealed that for the nonspatial matching task, lead-exposed monkeys responded incorrectly on the position that had been responded on correctly on the previous trial. This type of behavior may be considered to represent perseverative behavior and is reminiscent of the perseverative errors in other groups on delayed alternation. On the other hand, it may be considered to be the result of increased distractibility by irrelevant cues by lead-treated monkeys, similar to the increased attention to irrelevant cues displayed in the discrimination reversal tasks. (These interpretations are not mutually exclusive.) This behavior is at least partly responsible for the poorer performance at long delays observed in lead-treated monkeys on the nonspatial matching-to-sample task, although other mechanisms may also play a part. The lack of interference from previous trials on the spatial version of the task, however, may indicate a pure deficit in spatial...

Effects of PCB Exposure on Working Memory (continued) A number of epidemiological studies have examined working memory in children following developmental exposure to PCBs (Table 8.2). A rather extensive assessment of working memory has been conducted in the children of the Michigan cohort at 7 months and at 4 and 11 years of age. As previously mentioned, the children were exposed to PCBs during gestation and lactation as a result of contaminated fish consumption by their mothers. Prenatal exposure was determined by measuring PCB levels in umbilical cord serum. Postnatal exposure was determined by measuring breast milk PCB levels at birth and at 5 months of age in women who breast fed. to novelty score in the most highly exposed infants was 50 , indicating that these infants showed no preference for novelty. The failure to show a preference suggests a working-memory impairment. Tests at age 4 included a simplified version of the Sternberg memory paradigm (Jacobson et al., 1992) as...

16-Arm RAM with Working Memory and Reference Memory b ETR entries to repeat WM working memory RM reference memory RAM radial arm maze T enhanced performance i impaired performance - no effect. The effects of d-tubocurarine chloride (dTC), DHpE, and MLA have also been studied on the RAM 17 . The antagonists were injected directly into the ventral hippocampus-entorhinal (VHE) area via bilateral cannulae. Doses of dTC could not be found that would impair RAM performance without causing seizures 17 . Both DHpE and MLA cause significant dose-related decreases in ETR and increases in latency. However, the specificity of the selective antagonists is questioned, given the high doses required to induce significant impairments on the RAM 17 . Thus, another study 35 tested the effects of DHpE and MLA on the more difficult 16-arm RAM working-reference memory task. In that study, bilateral VHE injections of DHpE significantly increased both working- and reference-memory errors, while MLA only...

Ethanol clearly interacts with a variety of neurotransmitter systems, affecting different functional and anatomical systems to varying degrees. These effects depend on dose, time after administration, age, genetics, and a variety of other influences. Depending on the circumstances prevailing at the time of administration, ethanol can have seemingly opposite effects, e.g., stimulation versus sedation or performance enhancement versus disruption. The preponderance of the data support the proposition that ethanol acts to disrupt important aspects of cognitive function, primarily by degrading the discriminability of relevant stimuli. It is unclear at this time whether such effects result from or cause decreases in encoding or attentional properties. However, it does seem fairly clear that ethanol does not selectively disrupt working memory or learning at doses that adversely affect stimulus discriminability, attention, or encoding. The observation that important brain functions (such as...

Fixed-ratio schedules, and effects on discrimination reversal procedures suggestive of perseveration or diminished sensitivity to the consequences of behavior. Animal studies even suggest behavioral interventions to ameliorate MeHg's effects, interventions that entail the exaggeration of the discrepancy in the relative rate of reinforcement from concurrently available response alternatives. Behavioral procedures that tap memory processes are relatively insensitive to MeHg exposure. Where memorial processes do apply, they seem to involve what has been called working memory, which entails stimuli that the animal must remember but that can change from task to task.

When a distractor 3 sec in duration is placed near the start of the delay interval (distractor stimuli placed near the end of the delay interval are not as effective), subsequent choice accuracy decreases considerably, often to near chance (50 correct) performance. The degree of distractor-induced decrement in task accuracy is dependent upon distractor duration. A distractor 1 sec in duration has virtually no effect on young monkeys but significantly impairs short-delay accuracy in aged monkeys 37 . Moreover, drugs that improve attention such as methylphenidate can reverse distractor-impaired accuracies in young monkeys but not in aged monkeys. In this laboratory, we routinely use young macaques for studies of drugs expected to reverse distractibility. Efficacy in this model has relevance to the treatment of attention-deficit disorders. However, the more difficult task of pharmacologically reversing distractibility in aged monkeys could partly explain the reduced potency of...

Task selection is perhaps the most crucial decision an investigator can make. However, with the multitude of cognitive paradigms available for mice and the availability of mutant animals, it becomes important for the experimenter to decide a priori which tests are the most suitable for study. As the behavioral phenotype of many mutants may be heterogeneous, it is critical to examine multiple aspects of cognition that cover different domains of functioning, including preattention and attention, and various aspects of learning and memory (Figure 12.2). Tests of preattentive functioning have been described for mice 42, 43 , and most utilize a simple testing paradigm called prepulse inhibition (PPI). Additional paradigms include simple screens using object discrimination tests 37, 44 or more complex paradigms such as go no-go testing 45-46 , five-choice serial attention tasks 47 , or latent inhibition 48, 49 . Finally, tests of learning and memory can be designed to assess more specific...

Processes of learning and memory in the mouse are analogous to those found in humans and nonhuman primates. Memory is classified as either explicit or implicit, with explicit memory involving the processes of encoding, storage, and recall. Both explicit and implicit memories can be assessed with regard to immediate, short-term (working), and long-term memory. In addition to these processes, explicit or declarative memory can also categorized as immediate, short term, or long term. Immediate memory, also referred to as a sensory register 116, 119 , lasts less than several seconds but has a large capacity that can receive input simultaneously from multiple sensory modalities. Short-term memory is also termed working memory and is defined as a process that recruits knowledge on a short-term basis for rehearsal, elaboration, recoding, and comparison in order to solve a current problem 116, 120 . Long-term memory is recognized as a mechanism for storing...

Mecamylamine seems to have its greatest impairments during the acquisition of the task rather than during consolidation or retention of the task 12, 46 . It also seems to affect working memory and not reference memory 34, 40 . Mecamylamine had varying effects in aged rats, depending on the task given. It was ineffective in aged rats on the RAM 32 but exacerbated the effects on the 5-CRSTT 20 .

Many of the cognitive abnormalities in schizophrenia are similar to those resulting from damage to the prefrontal cortex (PFC) including attentional abnormalities, problems in reasoning and judgment and working memory deficits 69 . Together with evidence of reduced prefrontal dopaminergic function in schizophrenia, these observations have lead to the view that positive symptoms are due to subcortical hyperdopaminergia, while cognitive deficits are the results of hypodopaminergia in the PFC 70 . There are in fact data indicating that reduced dopaminergic activity in the PFC may cause over activation of the subcortical dopamine system 71,72 . Clinical reports that PFC D1 receptors are upregulated in schizophrenia due to a localized decrease in dopaminergic activity and that D1 receptor antagonists aggravate psychotic symptoms, are consistent with this hypothesis 73,74 .

Symptoms of ADD can be compared to impairments not in the individual musicians, but in the orchestra's conductor. As is clear in the cases of Larry and Monica, persons diagnosed with ADD usually are able to pay attention, to start and stop their actions, to keep up their alertness and effort, and to utilize their short-term memory effectively when engaged in certain favorite activities. This successful functioning of persons with ADD in preferred activities indicates that these people are not totally unable to exercise attention, alertness, or effort. They can play their instru

Skill-based performance is governed by stored patterns of preprogrammed instructions, and it occurs without conscious control. Such performance makes use of long-term memory. 2. Rule-based performance involves solving problems through stored rules of the if-then variety. Like skill-based performance, it uses long-term memory however, unlike skill-based performance, it is associated with a consciousness that a problem exists.59 The rules are usually based on experience from previous similar situations and are structured hierarchically, with the main rules on top their strength is an apparent function of how recently and how frequently they are used.72 Rule-based performance varies according to expertise novices tend to rely on a few main rules, whereas experts have many side rules and exceptions. 3. Knowledge-based performance involves conscious analytic processes and stored knowledge. It relies on working memory, which is comparatively slow and of relatively limited capacity....

Thorndike, Hagen, and Sattler (1986b) reported data for African Americans and Caucasians in the Binet-4's standardization sample, and observed ethnic differences for their adolescent and adult sample (ages 12-23) that are similar to the ones found for the WAIS-III and WAIS-R. Caucasians (N 1,303) outscored African Americans (N 210) by 17.4 points (1.16 SD) on the Composite (means of 103.5 and 86.1 based on standard scores having a mean of 100 and SD of 16), and demonstrated a comparable discrepancy on the Verbal Reasoning, Abstract Visual Reasoning, and Quantitative Reasoning Area scores African Americans earned mean standard scores of 85.4 to 87.7 on these three area scores. In Short-Term Memory, Caucasians scored about 11 points (0.73 SD) higher, 102.1 versus 91.2.

An additional factor-analytic study of the K-SNAP, K-FAST, KAIT, and WAIS-R produced a meaningful four-factor solution (Kaufman, Ishi-kuma, &amp Kaufman, 1994). The four factors produced by the sample of 225 were Gc, Gv Gf (broad visualization and fluid abilities), Gf, and Gsm (Horn's short-term memory). The three K-SNAP subtests were each associated with different factors, with each substantial factor loading entirely consistently with the rationale for the K-SNAP's development Four-Letter Words loaded on the Gf factor, Number Recall was associated with the Gsm factor, and Gestalt Closure loaded on the Gv Gf factor. Thus, these factor-analytic studies suggest that the construct validity of the K-SNAP is supported by its relationship to the Horn constructs (fluid, broad visualization, and short-term memory).

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) A severely disabling fatigue with self-reported impairments in concentration and short-term memory, sleep disturbances and musculoskeletal pain. Occurs worldwide. A number of infectious agents have been proposed as etiologic agents of CFS, including Human herpesviruses 4 (EBV), 5 (CMV) and 6 (HHV6) enteroviruses retroviruses and Borrelia burgdorferi. None has proved to be a unique causative agent, but it remains possible that such infections act as a trigger for the syndrome. Synonyms post-viral fatigue syndrome myalgic encephalitis (ME).

Each of the seven WAIS-III Verbal subtests makes demands on a person's memory and concept formation, although they differ considerably in the relative role assigned to each function. At one extreme is Digit Span, a test of short-term memory with a small conceptual component, the ability to reverse digits. Similarities occupies the opposite extreme of high conceptual-low memory. The ability to find the common, preferably abstract, element that unites two verbal concepts is perhaps a prototypical conceptual task. Memory is required to remember the examiner's question (short-term) and to retrieve the two concepts from storage (long-term), but the demands are minimal on both counts. The questions are short, and reduce to just two words, the concepts to be compared further, the concepts themselves are simple, common, and usually overlearned. Whereas dividing the Verbal scale into memory and conceptual halves is neither pure nor unequivocal, there has been some consensus on this type of...

In some cases these questions can be answered, yes or no, with little hesitation or ambiguity. Other cases are much more complicated, making one or both questions considerably more difficult to answer. Sometimes there are striking contradictions in the information provided by various informants about the patient's symptoms. One parent may describe a child as having significant problems with organizing and completing homework, retaining learned information, and utilizing short-term memory. The other parent of the same child may emphatically deny that such problems exist. Either one could be correct, or each may be correct about only certain aspects of the child's functioning.

However, the best available evidence suggests that LTP is relevant only to long-term memory storage, which is established only an hour or two after the learning event has taken place. It is not relevant to immediate and short-term memory. As an explanation for associative learning, therefore, it is not entirely adequate.

A third WAIS-R factor, historically labeled Freedom from Distractibility, but sometimes called Sequential Ability, Short-term Memory, Number Ability, Attention Concentration, or Working Memory, was identified for various abnormal samples and for normal groups differing in gender, ethnic background (African Americans, Caucasians, Hispanics), and age (Kaufman, 1990). This third factor is composed of two WAIS-R subtests Digit Span and Arithmetic.

In a car accident a few months before his 15th birthday. The accident resulted in partial paralysis of his left side and in a significant loss of vision. Vision in his right eye is limited to gross form discrimination peripherally and to light dark awareness in his central vision. Central vision in his left eye is normal but peripheral vision is severely limited. Difficulties with both short-term and long-term memory were noted after the accident. Subsequent to the accident, Walt enrolled in a new public high school following his family's move to another state. Placement in a learning disabilities resource room was continued. During this period, presenting problems included severe motor deficits and limited vision. Partial paralysis continued to affect his left side, and his balance was tenuous. Walt was naturally left-handed and, consequently, was forced to learn to use his right hand for writing activities. His remaining vision permitted him to do most academic tasks however, he...

Three WAIS-III subtests demand individuals to put their ideas into words, to express their thoughts spontaneously via several well-chosen words. Each of these tasks has its own 2-1-0, somewhat subjective scoring system in the WAIS-III manual that is quite prone to examiner error, and makes up the category that Bannatyne calls Verbal Conceptualization Ability Vocabulary, Comprehension, and Similarities. The remaining four Verbal subtests, composing the memory triad plus Information (considered semantic memory) and discussed in the previous Regardless of the interpretation given to a split between the low expression (memory) and high expression (conceptual) subtests on the Verbal scale, the occurrence of this configuration has some implications (1) V-IQ becomes an inefficient summary of the person's verbal intelligence (2) the Verbal Comprehension factor loses meaning, because Information splits off to join the memory triad and (3) systematic evaluation based on Bannatyne's system...

WAIS-III data on a small sample of 15 subjects with Huntington's Disease (33 male, mean age 44.7 years) comes from the WAIS-III WMS-III Technical Manual (Psychological Corporation, 1997). The group showed a striking 12.7-point V &gt P IQ profile. When examining the mean indexes, a similar pattern emerged (VCI &gt POI by 13.5 points), but the real story was the VCI &gt PSI discrepancy of 29.9 points (means of 98.4 and 69.3), demonstrating the degree to which the index profile shows enormous potential for neuropsychological assessment. The group earned similar means on the POI (84.0) and WMI (81.7). Thus, this sample showed relatively intact verbal abilities (although perhaps even lower than premorbid abilities), but severely affected visual-motor and processing speed skills, as well as deficits in visual-spatial ability, and either short-term memory or sequential processing skills.

A system of this kind is capable of learning. Exposure to a given combination of stimuli activates17 some signalling pathways and inhibits others. As a result, responses appropriate to the cell's or organism's needs are evoked. After the response has begun, the cell still contains a specific pattern of activated and inactivated signalling components. This pattern might persist in the short term. If some of the stimuli are repeated while the pattern lasts, the same responses will be evoked. Therefore, signalling pathways confer a kind of short-term memory on the cell.

Nikki showed her poor short-term memory, having to check with the key very often on a task requiring her to copy symbols that are paired with numbers. Though she tried to be careful, she made several mistakes, for example, copying the symbol for the number 3 in the box for the number 4. On the WAIS-III, Nikki earned a Verbal IQ of 106, a Performance IQ of 99, and Full Scale IQ of 103, scores that place her in the Average classification of intelligence and rank her at about the 50th-66th percentile for people her age (scores from all tests are listed in Table 12.7). Although her Verbal and Performance appear similar on the surface, Nikki's highly consistent scores on the three IQs mask the high degree of variability that characterized her subtest profile. Because of that variability, neither the Full Scale IQ nor the Verbal IQ provide a meaningful representation of her overall abilities. The Verbal scale is comprised of two indexes Verbal Comprehension and Working Memory. In Nikki's...

In PSP, the age of onset for initial symptoms ranges from fifty-five to past eighty years, with a five to six year duration of disease before death 11,95,116 . PSP is clinically characterized by Parkinsonism and prominent vertical gaze palsy 43,127 . Patients can also exhibit deficits in visual attention, information processing, long-term memory, conceptualization, and social cognition 70,84,86,102,106 . PSP is one of a number of Parkinsonian disorders that manifest as dementias, movement disorders, or both and share neu-ropathology that includes ubiquitinated neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) comprised of hyperphosphorylated tau proteins and ubiquitinated a-synuclein proteins (found in the form of Lewy bodies LBs ) 108 . These overlapping neurodegenerative diseases include Parkinson disease (PD), Parkinsonism-Dementia Complex of Guam (PDC-G) and Guamanian-ALS (ALS-G), frontotemporal dementia with Parkinsonism chromosome-17 type (FTDP), and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). Among...

While much of the data captured in working memory simply passes through in mere seconds, so as not to clutter up the brain's limited atten-tional resources, other information is held longer to be worked on and or gradually shifted into longer-term memory storage. A chess player may hold in mind several moves made by an opponent, trying to discern the underlying strategy and plan countermoves. Or a listener may hold in mind several sentences of a funny story being told by a friend so he can grasp the punch line of his friend's joke. Sometimes the chess moves and the words of the joke may be retained in other instances they are totally transient. Working memory functions like RAM on a computer files are not saved after use unless they are converted to hard-drive data through a save function. The brain has a process for converting contents of working memory into longer-term memories. Contents of working memory that are saved into long-term memory are usually routed through the...

Cognitive therapy was developed in the 1960s by psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck. It is derived from empirical findings from studies of depressed patients. Beck found that depressed patients' thinking is saturated with themes of deprivation, defeat, and loss. Moreover, their judgments are absolute and rigid. Usually, information processing proceeds in a fairly flexible manner, so that initial impressions or primary appraisals may be checked and verified or adjusted. Beck observed that during depression this flexibility is lost, making it extremely difficult for depressed persons to generate alternative interpretations of events, solutions to problems, or new ways of behaving. Cognitive deficits, such as impaired perception, recall, and long-term memory, interfere with reasoning. Errors in logic, or cognitive distortions, become more apparent and create a negative bias to thinking.

Many men and women complain of increasing problems with attention, working memory, and other executive functions as they reach late middle age and beyond. Denise Park and Trey Hedden (2001) evaluated men and women aged twenty-nine to ninety to determine how performance on tests of perceptual speed and working memory changes across age groups. They found that the rate of decline on measures of processing speed, working memory, and long-term memory was consistent across the lifespan. As this analogy illustrates, the absolute decline in working memory function may be equivalent across decades, but the proportion of processing resources lost is greater as one gets older. (p. 154)

Crystallographers, perhaps mindful of the intrinsic importance of their results, have a long and successful history of documentation. Early printed indexes and compendia have now been replaced by computer-based information banks. Complete three-dimensional structural data for some 140,000 compounds, from simple metals to proteins and viruses, are now stored in four crystallographic databases Allen, Bergerhoff and Sievers 1987 . All of the databases are regularly updated with new material and the long-term memory of existing crystal structures increases by about 10 per year. The Cambridge Structural Database Allen, Kennard and Taylor 1983 (CSD 90,000 + organo-carbon compounds) and the Protein Data Bank Bernstein, Koetzle, Williams, Meyer, Brice, Rodgers, Kennard, Shi-manouchi and Tasumi 1977 (PDB 550 + macromolecules) contain the vast bulk of available experimental knowledge of three-dimensional molecular structures.

The technical spirit permeates our entire pedagogical approach. Operating in a technical mode, we treat residents as empty vessels, the essential function of the residency program being to pour knowledge and skills from full vessels (faculty) into empty ones (residents). Our four-year mission, as we see it, is to fill up those vessels with thousands and thousands of facts. The implicit message the faculty sends the residents is this What you need to know is defined by what we know. If we don't know it, you don't need to know it. In fact, you would be well-advised not to inquire beyond what we are telling you, because drawing attention to what we don't know would redound to your detriment. On the other hand, if you memorize what we tell you over the next few years, we will give you a certificate of membership that entitles you to earn a handsome living. In many medical disciplines, the technical model of residency education has survived essentially unchanged for decades. It exhibits a...

This network is characterized by a very large number of computational nodes and variable weights. For input 1220 units (20x61) were used, in the hidden layer 300-400 units, and in the output 33 units. The total number of weighted links is therefore 375,900 or 501,200 for the two types of networks used. Clearly, a network containing this many weights has the capacity to memorize the small training set of 13 protease structures. The learning of the training set to a level of 99.9 on the binary distance constraints and 100 on the secondary structure assignment, indicates that the network memorizes the training set effectively, but is unlikely to incorporate generalizations. Thus, although the architecture is quite different, the application of this feedforward network is analogous to an associative memory network.

At age twelve, George was in fifth grade. He was a well-behaved boy who wanted very much to do well in school. His grades in math were always high, but he generally did poorly in reading and in any other classwork that involved reading. He was bright. On IQ tests he scored in the high average range. He had a strong vocabulary for listening and for speaking, but his reading vocabulary was very small. He could not read many words that were familiar when spoken to him. He could memorize a short list of words for weekly spelling tests, but he could not remember to spell those words correctly after the test and he was generally a very poor speller.

He had only few contacts with the Polish government and felt isolated in Warsaw. Later at a cocktail party given by the Polish Vice Prime Minister, Eugenius Szer, I tried to convey the Ambassador's feeling of isolation and was assured that a meeting would be arranged. At the Seder, I met the famous Yiddish actress Ida Kaminska and went later to her performance at the Yiddish Theatre. Most of the actors were not Jewish and memorized the Yiddish text by heart. The theatre was the only remains of the rich and abundant Jewish cultural life in Poland.

Artificial intelligence offers numerous methods for representing large amounts of knowledge and for reasoning with that knowledge to find solutions to problems. We use a common and very general framework known as a production system. A production system consists of a set of rules for drawing conclusions and performing actions, a working memory that structures the relevant information appropriately, and a control strategy for governing the use of the rule set on the working memory. Each of our production rules is expressed in an English-like if-then form. For example, to denote the requirement that a 3' terminus be paired and have a hydroxyl group for DNA polymerase I to extend a primer, we write

The object representations described in Section 3.1 correspond to the working memory of a production system the rule set, which operates on working memory, captures knowledge of the potential interactions between and behaviors of the simulation objects. Rules for simulating DNA-POLY-MERASE-I action are all instances of the DNA-POL-I-RULES class, contained in the POL-I-KB knowledge base. The LIGASE-RULE class is like

Once developed, executive functions do not remain static over the lifetime. They may be refined further during early and middle adult years, and in later adulthood, for many, they begin to decline. Monica Fabiani and Emily Wee (2001) have shown that impairment in frontal lobe functioning is characteristic of elderly adults on many cognitive tasks, especially those involving working memory but they emphasize that individual differences tend to increase with age. Lifestyle, general health, and other factors greatly contribute to the effects of age on executive functions. Although there is considerable variability among elderly persons in the quality of their cognitive functioning, many manifest impairments in working memory as they age, even without any disease processes or dementias. Some suggest that the increasing inefficiency of working memory in the elderly is due to specific impairments in memory other researchers, for example, Timothy Salthouse (1991), suggest that the apparent...

WAIS-III to determine which was the most statistically sound and clinically useful (see Tables 7.1 and 7.2). In the total sample, as well as across most of the five age groups studied, The Psychological Corporation (1997) found significant successive improvements in model fit moving from two to three to four factors. The conclusion was that the four-factor model best fits the data for the total sample and most age groups. Ward et al. (2000) found that the three-factor models statistically fit better than the two-factor model however, the advantage was very minimal. An important observation made by Ward et al. was that their alternative two-factor model, which assigns the three Working Memory subtests to the Performance Scale (see Table 7.2, Model 2B) afforded a better fit in the younger groups than did the traditional dichotomy of Verbal-Performance subtests. In comparing the three- and four-factor models, Ward et al. found that, overall, there were no important differences between...

The implications of Wechsler research with children and adults diagnosed with learning disabilities are that the obtained IQs may be misleading. Low Verbal IQs are likely to reflect, at least to some extent, the poor school achievement of these individuals, along with impaired functioning in subtests associated with the Working Memory and Freedom from Distractibility factors. Whereas the Performance IQ is often the best estimate of LD children and adults' intellectual ability (except for those who attend or graduate from college despite their disability), this nonverbal estimate of intelligence is likely to be depressed by poor scores on the subtests that constitute the Processing Speed factor. The best solution is to group the tasks in accordance with the WAIS-III's four factors (or three WAIS-R factors if examining WAIS-R data), or to apply Bannatyne's four groupings of subtests (Chapter 10) Spatial, Verbal Conceptualization, Sequential, and Acquired Knowledge. For many individuals...

Tulsky, Zhu, and Prifitera (in press) tested the stability of the WAIS-III factor structure on different ethnic groups by conducting exploratory analyses separately for groups of African Americans (N 279), Hipanics (N 181), and Caucasians (N 1925) from the standardization sample. Overall, the results of the solutions with an oblique rotation across the separate ethnic groups were similar to those presented for the total sample (see Table 7.7). The main difference concerned the pattern of loadings for Arithmetic. For the African Americans, Arithmetic's loadings were split between Verbal Comprehension and Working Memory, and, for Hispanics, Arithmetic's loadings were split between Verbal Comprehension and Perceptual Organization. We calculated the coefficients of congruence between the ethnic groups, taken two at a time, and found the factors to be highly congruent (see Table 7.8). Values ranged from .90 to .99 (median .965), with the greatest congruence shown for Verbal Comprehension...

Comparison of these comorbid disorders with the characteristics of ADD syndrome shows considerable overlap as well as differences. Management of arousal, ability to activate for tasks, ability to sustain effort for tasks, management of emotions, ability to effectively utilize working memory, ability to size up and regulate actions in social situations these interacting executive functions tend to be impaired in each of these comorbid disorders. Yet each of the comorbid disorders of arousal and motivation is also characterized by more extreme intensity or absence of arousal, and or by motivation that is more extreme in its variability or fixity, than is usually found in ADD syndrome itself. These extremes of arousal and motivation, combined with specific related impairments of these various disorders, occur among persons with ADHD more often than in most others without ADHD. The high rates of comorbidity between ADHD and these various disorders of motivation and arousal may be seen as...

Children and adolescents with disruptive behavioral problems are the ones who primarily benefit from behavioral treatments, which are of limited use for improving cognitive functions such as working memory, processing speed, and sustaining alertness. Behavioral strategies may also help to reduce the common tendency of parents, teachers, and others unwittingly to reinforce a child's disruptive behaviors. For an overview of the extensive body of research showing the effectiveness of these interventions for disruptive behavior orders, including ADHD, see William Pelham and Daniel Waschbusch (1999).

This longer-term future planning challenges an aspect of working memory that has not been discussed much in the neuropsychological literature thus far. Paul Eslinger (1996) observes This type of prospective archival memory is not well-defined in current models. It qualifies as a type of working memory because it implies prospective memory-guided responding rather than sensory-guided responding. It is frequently changing yet enduring over a long period of time. Does the influence of future goals reside in some form of longer-term working memory that is kept alive by daily activities such as the behaviors that alter future consequences (p. 385) It is during adolescence that this ability to relate the choices of the moment and of the day to longer-term aims and goals becomes increasingly important. This aspect of working memory is often significantly impaired in adolescents with ADD syndrome. As the scaffolding of earlier years is

The LD subjects were also -11.8 points lower on the GIA-Std cluster. The largest differences on the cognitive clusters occurred in domains related to the efficiency of cognitive processing and Ga abilities. In particular, the largest mean score differences were noted for the Cognitive Efficiency (-11.8 for Standard and -10.4 for Extended), Auditory Processing (-11.7), Phonemic Awareness (-11.3), and Working Memory (-11.1) clusters. The only cognitive clusters that did not differentiate the two groups were the Long-term Retrieval (Glr), Visual-Spatial Thinking (Gv), and Cognitive Fluency (Gs) clusters. Collectively, the mean score comparisons suggest that the WJ III COG and ACH batteries provide useful information for the differentiation of adult university subjects with and without learning disabilities. These largely descriptive findings suggest that adult university students with learning disabilities, as a group, are characterized by significantly lower achievement (across all...

Figure 3 Primary brain structures involved in executive functions. Working memory circuits are located primarily in the prefrontal cortex the hippocampus converts working memories into longer-term memories. Risks and rewards are identified primarily via the amygdala and dopamine circuits, which originate in the ventral tegmental area. Alertness is supported by circuits from the locus coeruleus and reticular formation, and circuits from the cerebellum drive the fine-tuning of cognition. These circuits all interact with many others. Figure 3 Primary brain structures involved in executive functions. Working memory circuits are located primarily in the prefrontal cortex the hippocampus converts working memories into longer-term memories. Risks and rewards are identified primarily via the amygdala and dopamine circuits, which originate in the ventral tegmental area. Alertness is supported by circuits from the locus coeruleus and reticular formation, and circuits from the cerebellum drive...

Patients with MSA usually retain normal intelligence levels, but abnormalities of neuropsychological function have been described (Meco et al., 1996). In a few studies, a distinctive pattern of cognitive defects was found, suggesting normal intelligence but disorders of frontal lobe function (Robbins et al., 1992 Brown et al., 2002). These included difficulties with attentional set shifting when extradimensional shifting was required, impairment in subject-ordered tests of spatial working memory, and deficits in speed of thinking (rather than of accuracy) in the Tower of London task. Another study in patients with MSA-P demonstrated impairment on category and phonemic fluency, frontal behaviors, trail making tests A and B, and free recall in the Grober and Buschke test (Pillon et al., 1995). These patients were normal on all other tests, including the revised Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale verbal and memory scales.

Although the authors of another study of eminent adults, Berkeley professors, included the optimistic phrase evidence for successful aging in their title (Shimamura et al., 1995), their results (discussed, in part, on pp. 159) belie their optimism. Their oldest sample of professors, who averaged only 64.7 years of age, performed about equally to middle-aged and young professors in their ability to recall factual passages that were read to them. Tasks such as that those load highly on Gc factors (Kaufman &amp Horn, 1996), and maintenance of ability on crystallized tasks through the decade of the 60s is a well-known finding for adults who are not elite. On all other tasks in the study, however, the elderly professors scored significantly and substantially lower than the other groups of professors. These tasks included a paired-associate task, resembling the KAIT Rebus Learning subtest, which loaded substantially on a Gf factor for adults of all ages (Kaufman &amp...

Structure was quite different for the oldest group. Namely, the 75- to 89-year-old sample had different subtests loading on the Processing Speed and Perceptual Organization factors than did all other age groups, and both Processing Speed subtests had secondary loadings (.37-.39) on the Working Memory factor. Regarding the nonverbal factors, many Performance subtests loaded primarily on the Processing Speed factor Picture Completion, Block Design, Picture Arrangement, Digit Symbol-Coding, and Symbol Search. Only one subtest had a loading above .40 on the Perceptual Organization factor, Matrix Reasoning, which is an untimed test. Block Design had a secondary loading on the Perceptual Organization factor of .39, but loaded higher on Processing Speed (.51). The test publisher hypothesized that the time limits on the Performance subtests led to a heavier weighting on processing speed for the oldest age group. However, that explanation is not consistent with the results of the four-factor...

When clinicians examine Bannatyne profiles on Wechsler scales for LD referrals, research suggests that they should anticipate strength in Spatial Ability contrasted with weakness in Sequential Ability and Acquired Knowledge. For college students, Verbal Conceptualization Ability may conceivably join Spatial Ability as an area of relative strength, and Acquired Knowledge may fail to emerge as a weakness. For females referred for learning disabilities, Sequential Ability may not emerge as a striking weakness because of good performance on Digit Symbol. In addition, there is some evidence that the Working Memory and Processing Speed indexes may

These various brain circuits that support executive functions do not work in isolation. For most tasks, their operations are closely linked and interdependent. For example, Jan de Fockert and others (2001) used imaging studies to demonstrate linkage of working memory with tasks of selective attention. Imaging by the labs of Helen Mayberg (1999) and Jean-Baptiste Pochon (2002) have demonstrated circuits in the brain that gate emotions. Florence Levy (2004) has explained the crucial role of dopamine in this gating process that allows most people to attenuate emotional reactions, such as anxiety or discouragement, when they are trying to deal with important concerns. Posner (1994) and Raichle did a series of imaging studies that showed linkages within the prefrontal cortex and with other brain regions they found four different areas of the brain consistently lighting up when adults were asked to do simple verbal tasks.

Examiner careful to avoid flashy, brightly colored clothing or jewelry. However, some patients will be distractible regardless of the examiner or testing environment, and the subtests composing the Working Memory Index are likely to be the ones most affected, with the Processing Speed tasks a close second. Poor performance on the WMI tasks due to distractibility leads to a very different interpretation from poor scores due to a verbal-sequential deficit. The latter cause of low scores reflects a deficit associated with the left hemisphere, whereas the former cause is not limited to either side of the brain. Examiners must be alert to distractible behavior, and they need to assess its probable impact on test performance. Because the three WAIS-III subtests most influenced by distractibility are on the Verbal Scale, it is V-IQ that will most likely be artificially depressed for a distractible patient. Hence, examiners of left-lesion patients must be especially aware that some large P...

Taken together, these results suggest that across wide age spans, these tests of story recall offer a brief and effective way to test impairments of verbal working memory in individuals being assessed for ADHD. These simple tests take only about ten minutes to administer. The task allows the clinician to check the effectiveness of a patient's working memory on a task similar to many situations in daily life where one is given information orally and is able to hear it only once. It should be noted, however, that in each age group some persons with ADHD were not impaired on the story-recall task, while some who did not have ADHD were impaired. For this reason, results of such a test cannot be used alone to determine the presence or absence of ADHD. Multiple measures are needed. index scores on the WISC-III. Two of the indexes the Verbal Comprehension Index (VCI) and the Perceptual Organization Index (POI) summarize subtests less sensitive to executive-function impairments instead these...

Some situations require only the simple exercise of very basic functions waiting a moment, heeding a warning to stop, saying a few words, or noticing the lighted color on a stoplight. Others are more complex and require more refined executive abilities. For example, in many situations behaving carefully requires attending to details that may signal risk it also requires working memory to keep in mind what one is doing, for example, avoiding distractions and attending to traffic while trying to cross a street. It also requires calling to mind information relevant to the present moment, such as remembering cautions one has been given to avoid certain potentially risky situations. And it requires monitoring and self-regulating actions so that one is not completely dependent on others to protect and control what one is doing. Even in the early years of preschool, some children demonstrate significant delays or impairments in development of certain capacities of working memory, planning,...

Gf (matrices), Gc (WAIS Information and Vocabulary), and a mixture of Gf and Gc (WAIS Similarities). They noted significant age differences in favor of the young adults on both Gf tasks (including Similarities) and on all measures of executive functions within the elderly sample, the measures of frontal lobe functioning correlated significantly only with the Gf tasks. Conceivably, it is the decline in executive functions (such as inhibition) that may relate directly to age-related declines on measures of Gv and Gf, and on tests of working memory and episodic memory. Indeed, the executive control of cognitive processes is a necessary component of virtually all cognitive activity, and its breakdown may underlie many of the age-related deficits in information processing when modality-specific functions are still intact (Raz, 2000, p. 63). Parkin and Java (1999) also observed significant deterioration in tests of frontal lobe executive functions for adults ages 65-74 and 75+, relative to...

Or oblimin (Table 7.5) rotation, the third factor is characterized by a robust dimension of five subtests Arithmetic, Digit Span, Letter-Number Sequencing, Symbol Search, and Digit Symbol-Coding. These five subtests are those that comprise the WAIS-III's Working Memory Index and the Processing Speed Index.

For many years, physicians prescribed stimulant medications to children only for school days or for weekend days when homework needed to be done. In recent years, however, clinicians have come to recognize that non-academic tasks are also impaired with ADD syndrome. A child who has great difficulty in maintaining focus, sustaining effort, utilizing working memory, managing frustration, monitoring action, and so on in school is likely also to have similar difficulties when playing Little League baseball, attending religious services, or interacting with friends and family. Most adults with ADD syndrome who are excessively distracted and forgetful at work are likely to have similar difficulties while shopping, driving their car, managing their children, or interacting with colleagues and family.

The most commonly requested accommodation is extended time for taking tests and examinations. Because of their slow cognitive processing speed and impairments of working memory, many children, adolescents, and adults with ADD syndrome have great difficulty completing tests and examinations within standard time allotments. To compensate for their ADD impairments, they often need to reread directions and test items multiple times and need repeatedly to recheck their answers. This may slow their work so much that they are unable even to attempt many items on the test. Thus they may get a low grade, not because they did not know the material and gave wrong answers, but because they were unable to complete the exam.

Although there are similarities in the factor structures for the four adult Wechsler batteries, there are some differences in the WAIS-III that one should consider before generalizing from W-B I, WAIS, or WAIS-R investigations of the two or three constructs that underlie the test batteries. The Verbal and Performance IQs continue to denote the two major factors, but, with the WAIS-III, the Object Assembly subtest is no longer a part of the Performance IQ and the new Matrix Reasoning subtest stands in its place. Although the mean scores on these two subtests have been shown to be almost identical across most age groups (Kaufman, 2000a Kaufman &amp Lichtenberger, 1999), these two subtests are likely measuring quite different abilities, and may impact the meaning of the Performance IQ. Whereas Matrix Reasoning is a prototypical measure of Horn's fluid ability (Gf), Object Assembly requires speed and visual-motor problem solving in addition to Gf. Therefore, any studies that explored V-P...

Dren, including many with ADHD, to refrain from being disruptive in classrooms and at home. But it is difficult to see how even the best behavioral treatment program can modify an individual's impairments of ADD syndrome as they affect working memory or hamper one's ability to sustain attention enough to understand what one is reading, to write an essay, or to drive a car. And it is very difficult to imagine how such approaches could be used effectively for adolescents or adults with ADD syndrome who struggle to function as students in high school or university, or as working adults, or parents situations where no one is available to monitor their complex behaviors or manage their reinforcements.

Since Freud's time, much more has been learned about the unconscious workings of the mind. A new view of the unconscious, quite different from psychoanalytic formulations, is emerging in psychology and neuroscience (see Hassin, Uleman, and Bargh 2005). But still many persons are reluctant to believe that their conscious thought does not reign supreme over their cognition. Even though they do not expect to control by willpower the endocrine malfunctions of diabetes or the growth of a cancer, they want to believe that willpower can sustain control over malfunctioning cognitive processes that, among other important tasks, organize and prioritize, maintain working memory, activate effort, and regulate alertness.

However, the pattern of abnormal movement-related activity in frontal motor areas has been variable across studies (9-12). Since these studies used motor tasks that differed in terms of movement parameters and cognitive load, the implication is that, in PD, functional impairment of the various basal ganglia-thalamocortical motor loops is highly dependent on the motor context. In addition to motor activation studies, BOLD-sensitive fMRI has also successfully been employed to assess nonmotor functions such as attention to action and working memory in PD (12,13). Repeated fMRI measurements have also been used to image the acute effects of a therapeutic intervention. For instance, pharmacological fMRI studies have consistently demonstrated a partial normalization of movement-related activation in frontal motor areas after oral administration of levodopa (9-11).

That are more associated with the Freedom from Distractibility Working Memory factor than the Verbal Comprehension factor (Arithmetic, Digit Span) and for the two groups (samples 12 and 13 in Table 8.9) with low overall functioning. Mean scores for right-lesion patients were in the average range for four W-B WAIS samples (samples 1, 3, 7, 8) on Block Design, and for three W-B WAIS samples on Object Assembly (samples 1, 3, 7). However, samples 1, 3, and 8 are limited to patients with temporal lobe epilepsy lesions to the temporal lobe are not associated with poor performance on Block Design and Object Assembly, both of which are sensitive to lesions in the more posterior regions of the right hemisphere (Lezak, 1995 Reitan, 1986).

The administrative burdens of her manager's job included setting up the work schedules for three shifts, finding coverage for nurses calling in sick, keeping track of supplies that needed to be ordered, filing required reports, representing the interests of her unit in administrative meetings, and arbitrating disputes among staff members. Unlike direct patient care, which was intensive and complex but limited to dealing with just a few patients within the limits of eight-hour shifts, this administrative position required much planning, thought, and discussion over both the short and longer terms. It required her to keep in mind countless requests, complaints, and tasks that carried over from one day to the next, sometimes over weeks and months. In short, these management tasks severely challenged this nurse's chronic executive-function impairments in organizing and prioritizing, in sustaining attention, and in utilizing working memory.

Also, the interpretation of maintained and vulnerable abilities needs to incorporate research and theory on numerous other factors as well, such as working memory, executive functions, sensory acuity, and physical health in addition, neuropsychological and neuroimag-ing findings, often involving the frontal lobe, are crucial for understanding the normal aging process. Although much cross-sectional and longitudinal research has been conducted on attenuating the decline on vulnerable abilities (e.g., by engaging in intellectually stimulating activities), the results of these studies are equivocal.

This girl reported that despite her initial discomfort with drinking beer and smoking marijuana, she soon came to enjoy its relaxing properties as well as the concomitant social interaction. She said she also appreciated her boyfriend's gentle sexual attentions that gradually developed into an active sexual relationship enjoyed by both of them. Her failure to take regularly the contraceptive pills she had obtained from a clinic was probably due to the effects of her ADD-related working memory problems combined with her dimly sensed hope that if she were accidentally to be

Second, we recommend using composites or clusters, rather than subtests, in intra-individual analysis. Additionally, the clusters that are used in the analysis must represent unitary abilities, meaning that the magnitude of the difference between the highest and lowest score in the cluster is not uncommon in the general population. Furthermore, the clusters that are included in the interpretive analysis should represent basic primary factors in mental organization (e.g., visual processing, auditory short-term memory). When the variance that is common to all clusters (as opposed to subtests) is removed during ipsatization, proportionately more reliable variance remains. And, it is precisely this shared, reliable variance that we believe ought to be interpreted because it represents the construct that was intended to be measured by the cluster. For example, when the following clusters are ipsatized Gf, Gc, Gsm, Gv, and Glr the variance that is common to all of them (presumably g) is...

Luria (1980) posited the existence of three blocks or functional units in the brain Block 1 concerns arousal or attention Block 2 deals with successive and simultaneous coding functions, and pertains directly to the sequential-simultaneous dichotomy just discussed and Block 3 involves higher-level planning processes (Luria, 1980 Naglieri, 1999 Naglieri &amp Das, 1988, 1997). Digit Symbol-Coding, apart from its sequential component, is for Rapaport a measure of concentration and is often a member of the dis-tractibility working memory grouping therefore, it may be thought of as a measure of arousal, a Block 1 function that maintains a proper state of arousal or cortical tone which is also important for effective performance because too much or too little interferes with proper processing of information (Naglieri &amp Das, 1988, p. 36). In addition, Picture Arrangement has long been considered a measure of planning ability, of anticipation of consequences, and, by inference, of Luria's...

The SCALD profile, briefly mentioned above, is another that warrants consideration in investigating learning disabilities. This profile comprises the Working Memory and Processing Speed Indexes on the WAIS-III, and is analogous to the SCAD profile on the WISC-III (Kaufman, 1994a). In about 30 to 40 of the subjects with learning disabilities tested with the WAIS-III, the Working Memory and Processing Speed indexes were significantly lower than the Verbal Comprehension and Perceptual Organization indexes, respectively. The WISC-III SCAD profile has shown inconsistent validation in learning disabled samples. Prifitera and Dersh (1993) found a significantly higher proportion of individuals with learning disabilities having the SCAD profile than those in the WISC-III standardization sample, but others have not found it to be useful in distinguishing students with and without learning disabilities (Ward, Hatt, &amp Young, 1995 Watkins, Kush, &amp Glutting, 1997).

The WJ III was designed to measure a wide array of the broad cognitive abilities. Thus, in addition to the fluid, crystallized, long-term memory, and short-term memory abilities into which McGrew (1997) classifies the KAIT subtests, the WJ III also has subtests classified in visual-spatial thinking, auditory processing, and processing speed. Future joint confirmatory factor analysis will provide more definitive information about the relationships between the subtests of the KAIT and the WJ III (see Chapter 14).

What has been recognized only in the past decade is that portions of the cerebellum provide similar fine-tuning for a wide variety of cognitive activities. Michael Posner and Marcus Raichle (1994) have demonstrated that the cerebellum plays an important role in selecting appropriate verbs to go with specific nouns. Antonio Damasio (2003) has reviewed research suggesting that portions of the cerebellum may also be involved in adjusting social behaviors, for example, laughing and crying, to specific situations. And Birgit Gottwald, with others (2003), has demonstrated that damage to specific areas of the cerebellum significantly impairs specific aspects of an individual's ability to divide attention between tasks and to utilize working memory. Apparently the cerebellum contributes to management of complex cognitive activities in a wide variety of ways.

John Chelonis (2002) tested whether MPH significantly improves working memory in children with ADHD. In a series of trials, children with ADHD were significantly more accurate and efficient in remembering shapes correctly when on the MPH than when off it on medication, their performance became as efficient as that of normal children of the same age range. The medication normalized their impaired working memory. MPH may influence global cognitive processes, such as atten-tional capacity or working memory, that are deficient in children with ADHD and result in improvements in aspects of response inhibition, as well as response execution. (p. 325) Taken together, these various studies demonstrate that stimulant medications improve a variety of functions impaired in ADD syndrome. These include sustaining alertness, focus, motivation, and effort for tasks that are not intrinsically interesting shifting attention as needed utilizing working memory adjusting processing speed to the demands...

Another factor is the academic side of the field. Student interest in a field may be enhanced by giving them an opportunity to participate in such academic pursuits as education and research. Every student can learn enough about a subject to teach it well to someone else,whether a patient, a more junior student, or a health professional in another field. Likewise, every medical student is intelligent enough to contribute in some way to investigation. The key is to move students out of the role of passive recipients of knowledge and into the active role of sharing or advancing it. The very brightest of our students will not be fully engaged by merely memorizing what someone else tells them they need to know. What they need are opportunities to see what they are capable of and to spread their intellectual wings.

Many middle-aged women report that during menopause, whether naturally occurring or surgically induced, they experience for the first time a constellation of persisting symptoms that closely resembles ADD syndrome. They note significant declines in short-term memory, in the ability to screen distractions and to sustain attention, in the organization and prioritizing of tasks, and so on. Some of these women are very competent, well-educated professionals and business executives who until menopause have never experienced significant impairments of ADD syndrome. In addition, women who have been diagnosed before menopause with ADD often report that their ADD symptoms tend to worsen for several days each month at about the time their estrogen level is probably lowest. As they enter menopause, many of these women also report significant exacerbation of their long-standing ADD symptoms. Barbara Sherwin (1998) has reported that administrating estrogen to postmenopausal women enhances verbal...

Dementia is a general term for an acquired progressive decline of cognitive function whose hallmark is a loss of short-term memory. It is an age-related disease where the clinical manifestations become evident in older individuals with the increase in lifespan in the industrialized world, there is an increase in the number of individuals afflicted with this disease. These people eventually require more and more care, often necessitating institutional placement. Alzheimer's dementia is the most prevalent clinical syndrome, accompanied by certain neuropatho-logical changes in the brain.

Memory and learning tests constitute the broadest category of tests in a traditional neuropsychological classification. From the perspective of CHC theory, three factorially distinct cognitive abilities (Gsm, Glr, Gc) fall within this broad category. The clinical assessment of memory deficits typically involves evaluation of the ability to actively learn and remember new material presented in both auditory and visual modalities. The adequacy of both short-term memory (immediate recall) and long-term retention (delayed recall) are typically assessed. Indexes of remote memory may also be helpful with persons of advanced age and other clinical populations. Eleven WJ III tests are identified as good measures of various aspects of memory or learning. Tests of auditory short-term memory (Gsm) include Numbers Reversed (MW), Auditory Working Memory (MW), and Memory for Words (MW). Picture Recognition (Gv) is an indicator of immediate visual recall (MV). Some neuropsychologists include tests...

Essary focus and effort, or to engage their working memory and monitor their actions enough to do what they know they need to do. But when appropriate medication is in place to correct the chronic chemical problems that have impaired their executive functions, they generally function well.

The WAIS-III provides for adequate coverage of Gsm via measures of memory span (MS) and working memory (MW). However, the CHC-organized CB research consistently suggests that the WAIS-III Working Memory Index (WMI) contains a significant proportion of con-struct-irrelevant Gq variance. The WAIS-III Arithmetic test is considered a good indicator of Gq, not Gsm. In addition to providing additional measures of memory span and working memory from the WMS-III and WJ III, the WJ III has the advantage of providing a relatively factorially pure norm-based composite score for working memory (Working Memory cluster).

As reflected in Figure 14.1, by the early 1980s, John Horn, a student of Cattell's, articulated the relatively complete Gf-Gc model of intelligence that included eight broad abilities, which, in turn, subsumed the WERCOF and PMA abilities. Horn, like Cattell, continued to dismiss the notion of g and posited the broad abilities of fluid intelligence (Gf), crystallized intelligence (Gc), visual processing (Gv), auditory processing (Ga), short-term acquisition and retrieval (SAR, later referred to as short-term memory or Gsm), tertiary storage and retrieval (TSR, later referred to as long-term storage and retrieval or Glr), processing speed (Gs), and correct decision speed (CDS) (Horn, 1991).

The first kind is oral reading fluency in which children not only become faster in recognizing words, but their oral reading begins to reflect the melody or intonation of the spoken language. The second kind is silent reading fluency in which children quickly and automatically access . . . word forms . . . thereby freeing up limited working memory resources for reading comprehension. (pp. 162-163) Children who suffer from chronic impairments in their ability to sustain attention and effort, to utilize working memory, and to employ other executive functions usually impaired by ADD syndrome, are likely to have continuing difficulty in these more advanced aspects of reading comprehension. Children with significant attention impairments during their early school years are likely to experience difficulties not only in reading, but also in learning mathematics. Elizabeth Benedetto-Nasho and Rosemary Tannock (1999) studied students aged seven to eleven years, half of them with an ADHD...

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